Et tu, Al Gore?

11Jan

Updated: Jan. 27, 2012

Et tu, Al Gore?

Watching The Young Turks covering the NH primary last night on Al Gore’s Current TV, I was struck by the comments made by Gore and Jennifer Granholm. Cenk, who appears to be one honest, smart reporter dedicated to the truth, brought up the topic of exit polls. Gore and Granholm immediately reverted to the media canard that they are not to be trusted.

Al Gore KNOWS he won in 2000 and that the exit polls indicated just that in Florida until 16,000 votes were DEDUCTED from Gore’s total in Volusia county. At that point, Fox News called Florida for Bush and the other networks immediately did likewise. Al Gore KNOWS that exit polls are very accurate; his comment was a real letdown to this analyst who has always been a fan.

For Gore and Granholm to dismiss the “unreliable” exit polls, they would also have to dismiss the following 2000 election facts.

Gore beat Bush by 540,000 recorded votes(48.4-47.9%). But he won the aggregate unadjusted state exit polls (56,000 respondents) by 50.8-44.5% – a 6 million vote margin. The True Vote Model had Gore by 51.5-44.7%. The Supreme Court awarded the election to Bush (271-267 EV).

Twelve states flipped from Gore in the exit poll to Bush in the recorded vote: AL AR AZ CO FL GA MO NC NV TN TX VA. Gore would have won the election if he captured just one of the states. Democracy died in 2000.

Coincidentally, according to the Census, there were nearly 6 million uncounted votes (spoiled, provisional, absentee), of which 75-80% were Gore votes. Therefore, uncounted votes account for approximately one half of the 6 million exit poll discrepancy.

Now consider Florida which Bush “won” by 537 recorded votes. But there were nearly 200,000 spoiled ballots, of which 70% were Gore votes – a combination of underpunched, overpunched and “butterfly” ballots. That’s a net loss to Gore of 80,000 votes right there. But how many TOTAL ballots (spoiled, provisional, absentee, etc.) were never counted?

Palast writes:Here’s how to estimate the effect of spoilage on the election outcome. For fun, let’s take Florida 2000. We know from comparison of census tracts to precincts that 54% of the 179,855 ballots “spoiled” were cast by African-American voters, that is, 97,000 of the total.

Every poll put the Black vote in Florida for Al Gore at over 90%. Reasonably assuming “spoiled” ballots matched the typical racial preferences, Gore lost more than 87,000 votes in the spoilage pile. Less than 10% of the African-American population voted for Mr. Bush, i.e. Bush lost no more than 10,000 votes to spoilage. The net effect: Gore had a plurality of at least 77,000 within the uncounted ballots cast by Black citizens.

OK, then, what about “Non-Black” voters, whose votes made up the remaining 46% of the spoilage pile? Well, frankly, you can ignore these, as these voters split their vote somewhat evenly between Gore and Bush. Sticklers wanting a closer exam would note that Gore probably won a majority of these votes as well. Moreover, the only large group of spoiled votes in a wealthy white county occurred in Palm Beach (due to “butterfly” ballots), a rare, rich white group of strongly Democratic voters.

Gore won the unadjusted Florida exit poll in a landslide 53.4-43.6%. There were 1816 respondents (a 3% margin of error), so there was a 95% probability that Gore’s share was between 50.4% and 56.4% – and a 97.5% probability that his share was at least 50.4%, a 230,000 vote margin. So how do we account for the 230,000 discrepancy from Bush’s 537 recorded vote margin?

Let’s be conservative. We will assume that the uncounted ballots were all spoiled ballots. According to the Census, there were 43,000 Net Uncounted votes (uncounted – stuffed ballots)in Florida.

Since Stuffed ballots is equal to Gross uncounted (200,000 spoiled) less Net uncounted (43,000), there must have been 157,000 stuffed ballots.

Therefore, Gore’s margin was reduced by approximately 80,000 from 200,000 spoiled ballots and another 157,000 from stuffed (presumably Bush) ballots. The 237,000 total is within 7,000 of the 230,000 calculated above. And that is being conservative. Remember, we are assuming that a) Gore’s vote share was 3% lower than his unadjusted 53.4% exit poll share and b) all of the uncounted votes were the result of 200,000 spoiled ballots. We have ignored absentee and provisional ballots – and votes switched or dropped in cyberspace.

My initial reaction is that the report is misleading at best. The authors assume that the Florida exit poll (which showed Gore with a significant lead) was incorrect and the recorded vote counts were accurate. They discourage the use of exit polls, claiming the vote counts should effectively stand by themselves.

It is this type of limited hangout, “conventional wisdom”, unquestioning, see-no-evil reporting, which finds fault with scientific exit polls but not with bogus reported vote counts, that provide cover for not just the 2000 stolen election but all the stolen elections which followed.

For example, there is no mention that 200,000 votes were uncounted, the great majority in Democratic minority districts. However, the authors cite the canard that the “early Gore call” discouraged Florida panhandle voters from coming out. This is unsupported by the facts; they had already voted earlier in the day – and were included in the exit poll.

I share your frustration with the stolen election of 2000, but exit polls are just a sampling of voters. Exit polls cannot possibly divine the difference in a close election. As the 2000 “selection” absolutely proved (and the NYT and many others chose to ignore), every single vote cast must be counted to arrive at the correct final tally.

The point of the post is that the 2000 election was NOT close. You are falling for the usual media misinformation. Must I repeat the salient points? There were nearly 6 million uncounted votes nationwide – and the vast majority (75-80%) were for Gore. That adds 3 million to his 540,000 recorded margin. There were over 50,000 exit polled nationwide. In Florida, nearly 200,000 out of 6 million were spoiled (underpunched, overpunched, butterfly)- and the vast majority were for Gore. And those are just the spoiled votes. There were also thousands of absentees and provisional ballots. There were 1816 exit poll respondents – a 3.0% margin of error. Considering that Gore won the exit poll by a solid 53-44%, he must have won the state easily – beyond a reasonable doubt. There was a 97.5% probability that he won by at least 50-46% (240,000 vote margin). It was NOT close.

How can exit polls be very accurate when 30% of people asked to participate do not? Do you really believe non-respondents are randomly distributed? To quote the Shawshank Redemption, are you really that obtuse?

Actually, the average response rate is even lower – around 50%. What you fail to appreciate is that it is not the number who fail to respond, it’s the number who respond from which we calculate the margin of error. There is no such thing as a poll which approaches anywhere near 100% response. Professional pollsters know what they are doing. It is obvious that you are unfamiliar with polling methodology. It seems that you are the one who is really that obtuse.